I remember staying up late on July 20th, 1969 and watching those blurry video pictures of the moon landing with so much anticipation and awe. That there could be live video transmitted from the moon was breathtaking in and of itself. How amazing that we could see grainy pictures of the landing and Neil Armstrong stepping off the Lunar Lander onto the surface of the moon for the first time. In fact, the blurriness of it all left so much more to the imagination than today's high definition video could ever impart. Finally a great optimistic dream was realized amidst the horrible unrest of the Vietnam War and the 1960s.

Now we've learned that through an incredibly stupid bureaucratic decision, the original video tape that recorded this historic event was written over for "budgetary" reasons.

However, all is not lost as several other recordings were made around the world. Now, the same technical wizards who have transferred to digital and restored various black-and-white Hollywood movies are in the process of resurrecting this incredible footage, making it far clearer than was originally seen on television.

Also just released by NASA are photographs of the original moon landing sites made by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yes, we now have verifiable evidence that we did indeed land on the moon! In some of these incredible pictures, you can see the astronauts footpaths (see above).

And finally, today, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, NASA and Google announced the launch of the Moon in Google Earth, an interactive, 3D atlas of the moon, viewable with Google Earth 5.0.

To view the Moon in Google Earth, open Google Earth 5.0 and switch modes from "Earth" to "Moon" on the top toolbar. To learn more about the Moon in Google Earth, visit: earth.google.com/moon